Best practice for partial repository checkout

I have a question about the best practice for checking out part of a
repository.

We have a repository that has a structure like:

trunk/
  hw/
  sw/
  apps/
  training/

Each of the sub-directories is quite large and taking up lots of space
when each of our engineers checks out the entire trunk.

    * The right way to check out (AFIK) would be to check out only the
      top-level directory that's needed. (Check-out is quite slow, on
      the order of a few hours!) That's fine for checking out a new
      sandbox, starting from scratch.
    * What about someone who has the whole trunk checked out, but
      realizes (for example, due to a company mandate) that one or more
      directories are not needed in his sandbox?

       1. One possibility is to delete the entire local sandbox and then
          check out only the directories that are needed. That's safe,
          but costly in check-out time and can lose any local
          work-in-progress.
       2. But what if a lot of work is in progress in, /e.g./, the hw
          directory, but a local copy of the sw directory is not needed?
          Is there an easy way to tell subversion that I don't need a
          copy of sw, or apps, or training, but that I want to keep all
          my local work in the hw directory?

What's the best practice for these scenarios?

Thanks,
Steve
Received on 2008-05-21 18:55:24 CEST